Chapter 761 – Today, I Patch the Heavens - Part 1

Underworld, Wild Ghost Village.

"She's the Northern Dipper." Li Yuan didn’t hesitate to expose Ying Zhuoyao’s identity. Then he added, “These must be the souls of the Starkin Path and Chaos Path.”

Yan Yu didn’t say much. With a flick of her sleeve, Ying Zhuoyao quietly walked to her side.

Raising a slender finger, Yan Yu touched the spirit’s forehead.

A strange, subtle power pulsed through the air. Ying Zhuoyao’s eyes slowly opened, but what appeared was a vacant, unfocused gaze. Her limbs seemed disconnected from her will, flailing awkwardly until she collapsed with a thud. Then she let out a strange, guttural chuckle.

Yan Yu flicked her sleeve again. Ying Zhuoyao’s eyes shut, and she slowly rose to her feet, puppet-like.

Yan Yu closed her eyes briefly, sensing something, then softly shook her head. “Her soul is severely damaged. Worse still, tangled within her are fragments of many other souls. They’ve been forcibly compressed together by some overwhelming power, impossible to separate.”

She glanced around at the other spirits nearby and added, “They’re all like this.”

Li Yuan asked, “What if they reincarnate?”

“They’d be born malformed,” Yan Yu said, calm but grim. “Mad. Broken from the start.”

Li Yuan frowned. “Is there any way to fix them?”

“For a regular ghost,” Yan Yu explained, “just tossing their soul into the Jade Pool would eventually heal them. But no matter how much torment a soul endures...they don’t end up like this.”

“...” Li Yuan fell silent.

“Even the Underworld might not be able to restore them,” she admitted. “But we can at least find them a quiet place to stay for now. I’ll have a judge bring them to the Jade Pool regularly. Maybe soaking there will help, little by little.”

Li Yuan couldn’t hold back anymore. “What

is

a soul, really?”

At first, he’d thought the soul was just some complex byproduct of flesh and blood. But now, standing in a world built entirely of souls, he knew it was something else entirely. Something that existed on its own.

Yan Yu remained silent for a long while. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

And at that moment, as the evil god souls were being carefully peeled away one by one, a lone male soul sitting in the center was finally revealed.

It was none other than Ping'an.

Yan Yu recognized him instantly.

“Ping'an is the same as the others... No,” she corrected herself. “Not the same. The others were only lightly entangled. But Ping'an...he’s soaked up the thoughts of every single evil god soul. He is still Ping'an. And yet...no longer Ping'an. And right now, there’s no way to wake him up.”

Li Yuan said nothing for a moment. Then he gave a wry smile. “At least he’s not dead. As long as the soul remains, there’s still hope.”

Yan Yu nodded lightly. “I’ll place Ping'an in the Jade Pool.”

Li Yuan looked long and hard at his son, then said nothing more. Instead, he turned and said, “Yan Yu, I’m heading back to keep exploring the Hall of Life.”

“Go on,” Yan Yu replied. “I’ve got things here.”

Li Yuan cast one last look at his son, at Ying Zhuoyao, and at those strange souls wreathed in eerie black mist. The forbidden beings of the Wild Ghost Village were terrifying, no doubt, but compared to these spirits, they somehow felt like they were missing something.

He thought carefully for a moment before realizing what it was.

His son, Ying Zhuoyao, and the others were like sleeping tiger cubs, wounded, limbs broken, lost in dreams.

But the ghosts of the Wild Ghost Village were like sheep. They were strong, well-fed, teeth bared, fully armed and very much awake.

That was the difference in

species

.

If souls could be ranked, then his son and Ying Zhuoyao would belong to a far more dangerous class altogether.

As for himself, and even Yan Yu, they were merely the highest refinement of

normal

souls.

Li Yuan mulled it over, and the more he thought, the more convinced he became.

He had never seen, or even imagined, a kind of ghost that could float freely without form, leap into any living body, and instantly become a one-man army with power in the tens of millions.

He took a few more steps, then suddenly stopped and looked back.

Yan Yu raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”

Li Yuan wasn’t the type to sleep on his concerns. At his level, the moment a worry took shape in his mind, he

had

to see it through.

Staring at his son, he asked slowly, “What if someone like Ping'an turned into a ghost?”

The question gave even Yan Yu pause, and she was the Primordial Earth Mother.

Ghosts were, in essence, souls corrupted by heavy Yin energy, mutating into strange, terrifying forms of unholy power.

But those creatures behind them...they weren’t

one soul

at all. They were

fusions

, blended together by the blazing crucible of chaos and compressed by endless time and conflict. Each individual soul had been fearsome in life, and now they had become something else entirely. Something unstable. Something far worse.

The Primordial Earth Mother fell silent.

From that silence, Li Yuan sensed her unease.

After a long moment, she shook her head.

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.” She paused. “Last time, I experimented through an avatar in the mortal world. This time... I’ll do it myself, here in the Underworld.”

“Be careful,” Li Yuan said.

“Mhm,” she murmured softly.

Moments later, Li Yuan returned to the voidship with Yan Yu’s soul fragment, landing once more in the Eastern Sea.

Deep beneath the waves, the three ancient halls stood like towers piercing the heavens. Though even now, what was visible was likely just the tip of a massive iceberg jutting in from another dimension.

Each of the three entrances was sealed off by a miniature world.

The serene blue sea flowed gently around the halls, seemingly untouched by their presence. But in truth, an invisible world separated the sea from the halls. Without that barrier, the ocean would have long since surged inside, unleashing the horrors slumbering within.

Li Yuan and Yan Yu’s soul fragment entered the Hall of Life with practiced ease. The corridors twisted like a labyrinth, and once again, they found themselves wandering through it for months.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

One day.

As the two were walking, both abruptly stopped.

They had reached the place from their memories, the spot with nine branching paths.

Yan Yu’s soul fragment raised her staff and gave it a wave. The gem embedded at the top shimmered, and nine white-robed sword fairies appeared.

Each one bowed to her, then split off down a different corridor.

These weren’t real cultivators, but paper effigies personally crafted by the Primordial Earth Mother herself.

They exuded such thick Yin energy that any one of them released into the mortal world would be considered a full-blown taboo level beings. But here, they were nothing more than disposable scouts.

The two watched the nine sword fairies disappear into the maze.

Yan Yu’s soul fragment smiled. “Which one do you think is the right path?”

Li Yuan glanced over the nine perfectly sealed tunnels. No spiritual sense could pierce them. He pointed to the one in the middle. “That one.”

Yan Yu pointed to the third from the right. “I say this one.”

“What happens if we lose the bet?” Li Yuan asked casually.

Yan Yu’s soul fragment replied, “Nothing much. Just a reminder not to take things too seriously.”

“Mhm. And

really

, what happens if we lose?” Li Yuan grinned.

Yan Yu’s soul fragment smiled back. “If you lose, you cook for me for ten years. If I lose, I’ll cook for you for ten. Fair?”

“No problem,” Li Yuan said, “But you’ll have to wait until I’m free. Most of the time, unless something urgent comes up, I’m deep in the Peach Blossom Sanctuary. So whether you’re cooking for me or I’m cooking for you, whoever’s free first can start.”

A faint bluish glow shimmered around them. The nine passageways ahead were made of heavy, black stone, their square, towering entrances like colossal gateways carved into a mountain. Li Yuan and Yan Yu stood before them, two tiny ants at the doorstep of a road built for giants.

They joked and chatted while they waited.

But no matter how long they waited, not a single paper effigy came back.

Eventually, Li Yuan lost patience. He reached into the void and summoned nine strange birds, each feathered with a metallic sheen.

The Peach Blossom Sanctuary was full of peach trees.

And where there were trees, there were birds.

Over the years, the peach trees had turned into fairies, and some of the birds had mutated under Li Yuan’s influence as well.

These nine birds were fifth rank demonic beasts.

But the moment they took flight, they promptly dropped to the ground with a thud. The Hall of Life’s terrifying gravity made flight impossible even for demonic beasts of this level. A regular human would’ve been flattened on the spot.

Li Yuan quickly synced his awareness with the nine

flightless

birds and tested their movement. Slow, but manageable. At least they could walk.

So he sent the nine birds hopping down the nine passageways. His vision followed with them.

Yan Yu’s soul fragment watched the awkward, bouncing creatures and could only shake her head in disbelief.

Li Yuan shrugged. “Hey, at least it still works. Slow is better than useless. And they’re more reliable than your paper girls. Just give them time.”

Yan Yu nodded, yawned, and casually pulled a bed out from her personal world. She set it at the entrance, climbed on, and dozed off.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Three days passed.

Li Yuan gently nudged her awake. “Time to go.”

“We found it?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes.

“Middle path,” he said.

Yan Yu blinked. “Alright, alright. I owe you ten years of cooking.”

She packed up the bed, washed her face with fresh water, and munched on some rations from the icy larder in her storage world.

Once she’d finished, the two of them entered the middle passageway.

Thanks to the scouting landbird, Li Yuan had already walked this path once.

He was sure it was the right one, mainly because all the other birds had suddenly blacked out along their routes.

Only the one on the center path made it all the way to a glowing door.

He’d had the bird step through the door before cutting the connection.

Now walking it in person, Li Yuan could feel a strange stillness creeping in, a sense of the world gently sliding into silence, as though everything were slowly being erased.

He glanced at his own status and froze. His combat power was plummeting.

Another few steps forward, and it dropped even faster.

“Wait.” Li Yuan grabbed Yan Yu’s soul fragment by the arm.

Even she could sense something was off.

He stood still, fully immersed in the moment, quietly attuning to the strange sensation around him. After a long while, a memory stirred.

“This is...the feeling of entering the Deathless Tomb.”

He remained motionless, letting the feeling settle deeper into his bones. The more he focused, the more certain he became. This place exactly mirrored the atmosphere of the Deathless Tomb.

And that meant one thing.

He wasn’t taking another step forward.

Without hesitation, he grabbed Yan Yu’s soul fragment and began backing away, explaining as they retreated.

But halfway through, he noticed something horrifying. The path behind them had vanished.

Without blinking, Li Yuan yanked her into the voidship and fled the space entirely.

Once he’d confirmed the area operated under the same twisted laws as the Deathless Tomb, he wasn’t about to take chances. Troublesome or not, he would always take the safest route, even if it meant starting from scratch.